I am a fickle blogger.
I find it hard to be brutally honest, even with myself and certainly with you. I keep it light and little humorous and never, ever veer into unsafe territory.
I don’t really share my deepest darkest secrets and there are a few. There are skeletons and regrets and learning curves, things I have done and things I haven’t and some that I probably should have. I tell tales, stories, light-hearted, silly stuff, that I may have coated with varnish for effect, or to make seem less of a thing than they really are. I pretty things up. Why? Because it easier. It is easier to pretend that it was nothing, than to admit that it was something.
In life you only tell people what you want them to know.
We all have our social persona, the one that we display to the world, the one that is likeable, the one that we think others will approve of. Writing is the same for me, it is a public me, despite being anonymous to most, I still put my best self forward, I want people to like me and as much as I hate to admit it I have always been a little bit of a people pleaser, but really the hardest thing is dealing with my emotions and it’s hard because I don’t want people to think I have any.
Surely people write to express themselves and their feelings, to share their thoughts and ideas? If you are too scared to be you, then why write about yourself?
Truth be told, I didn’t have anything else to write about. I only know one subject in depth (or I thought I did) and that is me. I know a little about most things, but not a lot about any one particular thing and I thought it would be fun. What am I talking about, it is fun! On the whole I still enjoy it, two or so years down the line I’m still doing it, even if when I look back nothing has changed a great deal, except my grammar (hopefully for the better), I still want to tell stories.
I am though finding it increasingly difficult to be honest, even with myself. When I look back over some of the things I have written, I realise how dishonest I have been. How often I have glossed over my feelings, whether they have been good feelings or bad feelings. I make light of everything.
Since lockdown began, a forty two ton truck of loneliness drove straight through the front garden and almost killed me. The realisation came not because of the here and now, but because of what might be, later on, in the future, when I am old and grey, when Tom and Elsie are off living a high life of their own and only checking in on Mum once a week by space ship, or whatever teleportal thing we have then and I am left to do all the things I ever wanted to do…
…except I don’t know what they are?
I mean I do know what they, or some of them at least. I have ideas and plans and things I want to do and see and I have always banged on about my plans for the future, how I am going to go here and there and travel the world three times over, live in a tee pee or become a nomad, but in reality everything is different. Reality is more sensible, it makes you think about the whys and wherefores and not just the whimsies. Reality questions you and forces you to ask yourself how. How you will achieve all this in REAL life?
This is not the first time I have felt like this.
The realisation that one day I will be on my own is one that comes around more and more frequently, these days. However, the thing I do have going for me is my positivity. There is always a brighter side in almost every situation. Therefore, when I think ahead, it is almost always with rose-tinted spectacles and mine are so pink I can barely see out of them.
I blindly believe that what will be will be.
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Since the start of lockdown I have been messaging Simon.
Now, to put this into context, or try, we have not met, we have only spoken on the phone twice and we exchange messages by email. I mean who does that? Anyone, ever?
The answer is simple, if you think about it.
Simon is married.
I met Simon on one of those dodgy casual encounter sites. I know. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and to be fair it has been on several occasions in the past. Not everyone that uses it is married, or weird, or trying to pimp out their girlfriends, some of us are fairly normal. Granted, few and far between, but when the loneliness creeps in it is hard not to be tempted by the quick fix of sex.
Anyway…
I should point out from the beginning, that I knew Simon was married, it said so on his profile and for some reason, unbeknown to myself, I still decided to engage in some chat. This is unusual behaviour, even for me, as I don’t usually entertain anyone who is already involved with someone else. I do not share. I can be quite territorial.
The fact that the country was just about to go into lockdown made meeting anyone for anything impossible, this meant I was safe. Safe to talk to Simon, because what is the worst that could happen, it wasn’t like we were going to be meeting anytime soon. We could just talk and idle the lockdown days away together, keeping each other company.
For a woman of my age, I am so completely naïve sometimes.
In the beginning, I rarely thought about him being married, although we did talk about it. I couldn’t see how it would make any difference to me, in my head we were never going to meet. It was looking likely that lockdown would go on for a while and it would be months before normal life resumed. It was just casual chat and conversation, something to keep us both amused.
Just a few weeks down the line and still nothing had changed, we talked everyday about this and that, some days more than others, and I was enjoying his company. I am a sucker for conversation, I love to talk and he is funny, and intelligent and sexy and well, everything really, everything that in an ideal world you would love about someone, he just floats my boat. I can see how this is potentially becoming dangerous for me now, but do I stop? Do I bollocks.
However, as the weeks roll on I am realising that the marriage thing is starting to bother me and the reason it bothers me is because… I fucking like him and my God that pisses me off. It makes me have days where I feel really shit. Shit because, I know I will be the one that loses out and shit because, I know it is wrong and shit because, I know he has a wife, who has no idea that she is married to a fucking shitbag. Then, when I think of him like that, it makes me cross again because he is a shitbag and he has no morals and no conscious and this inevitably comes across in my messages to him and then that makes me feel fucking shit to.
If (and I do seriously mean if), we were to ever actually meet and talk, to laugh and flirt in person, instead of over email, I think I would like him, a lot and this confuses me, as only affairs of the heart can, in that it makes me want to carry on talking and messaging and enjoying the thrill of getting to know someone, at the same time as continually telling myself to GET OUT NOW, while you still have a chance of keeping the ice cold heart you have grown to know and love, in one bloody piece.
I don’t want to fall in love with someone I can not have.
Of course, there is every chance I may not fall in love with Simon (largely because by the time we come out of lockdown I will hopefully have come to my senses and have moved swiftly on), but why would I take the risk? According to google almost half the population is single (or at least unmarried), why saddle yourself with someone who is already married? I have never been one for complicated, so why would I suddenly change my mantra?
I have never been in love and when I say I have never been in love, I mean I have loved but I have never had my heart broken. Am I lucky? I don’t feel it.
In the past I have felt pissed off and a little bit disappointed when relationships have ended but I have never cried more than a few tears and those were mostly tears of frustration, neither have I ever felt so sad that I couldn’t imagine continuing life without that person. I don’t seem to have any trouble moving on. Usually, there is a mourning period at the end of any relationship, where I analyse and pick over everything with a friend, to see who was at fault, or if things could have worked out differently, but I never really come up with any answers.
I don’t expect to fall in love. Even with him.
I genuinely think I am just one of those people who find relationships on any kind of emotional level difficult. Even if I do like you, you’d be hard pushed to get me to admit it. I struggle to express how I feel about anything that requires attachment, dependency or vulnerability and if it is simply because I haven’t met the right person yet (as many would have you believe), the one who will make me realise that it is OK to come out from behind the castle walls, then I don’t want it to be him.
I don’t want the first time I have even a flicker of feelings for someone, or my heart feels the first signs of happiness, to be for the one person I already know I can’t have.
I may as well just cut my own heart up, right here and now.
Nine weeks of lockdown later and I’ll be honest and say I am amazed we are even still talking, I have had actual relationships shorter than this, it’s ridiculous.
I am waning a bit though, for me this a world record in respect of ‘chatting’ and while we are still seemingly getting along just fine, I realise that his agenda is different to mine, he will try to keep things going because he is invested and he thinks it may pay off with some extra curricular activity, once we eventually come out of lockdown. For me though, I am already looking elsewhere, I think I know deep down that we will not meet, not least because it is a really stupid idea.
Sadly though I do like him, I can’t help myself.
I look forward to his messages and if things were different I know I would really want to meet him. He just makes me smile and laugh and feel happy and with those few words I know that lockdown was a good thing, as almost nine weeks later I would most likely be knee deep in heart ache and feeling incredibly sorry for myself at the stupidly awful situation I had got myself into, had things been different in the beginning.
However, we are still in lockdown and so rightly or wrongly, we continue to message and to keep each other amused everyday until… until, I don’t know until, just until I have to make a decision I suppose.
Or until I least until I bloody act on it…
Much love
❤️
Life, love and bollocks 